1. FROM THE ARCHIVES JOURNALS CLINICIAN’S CORNER
ABSTRACT AND COMMENTARY
Solutions for Improving Patient Safety
ARCHIVES OF SURGERY
Can Aviation-Based Team Training Elicit Sustainable attitudes and actions given prior to, immediately after, and a
Behavioral Change? minimum of 2 months after training.
Results: Since 2003, 10 courses trained 857 participants in
Harry C. Sax, MD; Patrick Browne, BMil; Raymond J. multiple disciplines. Preoperative checklist use rose (75% in
Mayewski, MD; Robert J. Panzer, MD; Kathleen C. Hittner, 2003, 86% in 2004, 94% in 2005, 98% in 2006, and 100% in
MD; Rebecca L. Burke, RN, MS; Sandra Coletta, MBA 2007). Self-initiated reports increased from 709 per quarter in
2002 to 1481 per quarter in 2008. The percentage of reports
Objective: To quantify effects of aviation-based crew resource related to environment as opposed to actual events increased
management training on patient safety–related behaviors and from 15.9% prior to training to 20.3% subsequently (PϽ.01).
perceived personal empowerment. Perceived self-empowerment, creating a culture of safety, rose
Design: Prospective study of checklist use, error self-reporting, by an average of 0.5 point in all 10 realms immediately
and a 10-point safety empowerment survey after participation posttraining (mean [SD] rating, 3.0 [0.07] vs 3.5 [0.05];
in a crew resource management training intervention. PϽ .05). This was maintained after a minimum of 2 months.
Setting: Seven hundred twenty-two–bed university hospital; There was a trend toward a hierarchical effect with participants
247-bed affiliated community hospital. less comfortable confronting incompetence in a physician
Participants: There were 857 participants, the majority of (mean [SD] rating, 3.1 [0.8]) than in nurses or technicians
whom were nurses (50%), followed by ancillary personnel (mean [SD] rating, 3.4 [0.7] for both) (PϾ .05).
(28%) and physicians (22%). Conclusions: Crew resource management programs can
Main Outcome Measures: Preoperative checklist use over influence personal behaviors and empowerment. Effects may
time; number and type of entries on a Web-based incident take years to be ingrained into the culture.
reporting system; and measurement of degree of
empowerment (1-5 scale) on a 10-point survey of safety Arch Surg. 2009;144(12):1133-1137
Commentary by Edward H. Livingston, MD remain common, leading some to recommend government
intervention.3 The slowness to rally around patient safety
N
EARLY A DECADE AGO, THE INSTITUTE OF MEDI- has been ascribed to inadequate accountability. Recommen-
cine (IOM) published “To Err Is Human” high- dations have been made to deliver harsh penalties to those
lighting the frequency of preventable deaths due who fail to comply with patient safety guidelines.4
to medical errors.1 According to the IOM, as many Is this strategy necessary to ensure patient safety? Not
as 98 000 patients per year die needlessly in US hospitals. likely, because physicians already work in a highly account-
Adopting a more rigorous safety culture should eliminate able environment. Medical care is subject to oversight by
these deaths. Given the natural inclination of the medical peer review proceedings and medical board evaluations of
community to promote good care and avoid harm, it was adverse events. Errors made by physicians may result in liti-
expected that medicine, as a profession, would have em- gation that is expensive and potentially career limiting. How-
braced changes to prevent these errors. Five years after the ever, fear of litigation or serious harmful publicity does
report was issued, an overview of the effects of the report not necessarily result in improved attention to patient
demonstrated that little change had occurred.2 A decade has safety. For instance, several infants treated at Cedars Sinai
now passed since the IOM publication and medical errors
Author Affiliations: Division of Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Surgery, Univer-
sity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. Dr Livingston is also Contrib-
uting Editor, JAMA.
CME available online at www.jamaarchivescme.com Corresponding Author: Edward H. Livingston, MD, University of Texas South-
and questions on p 180. western Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd, Room E7-126, Dallas, TX 75390
(edward.livingston@utsouthwestern.edu).
©2010 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. (Reprinted) JAMA, January 13, 2010—Vol 303, No. 2 159

2. FROM THE ARCHIVES
Hospital, in Los Angeles, California, were given exces- sional societies rather than from governmental bodies or in-
sively high doses of anticoagulants due to a dosing error. A surance companies.
well-known actor’s involvement in these events resulted in Two recent articles9,10 in the Archives of Surgery address pa-
widespread media coverage. The hospital was investigated tient safety issues. Neily et al9 presented findings from the VA
by the California Department of Public Health and settled patient safety database. Mimicking the National Aeronautics
with the hospital for $750 000.5 While this episode was evolv- and Space Administration’s no-fault reporting system, the VA
ing, another major safety lapse occurred at Cedars Sinai Hos- developed an anonymous no-fault reporting system for near
pital. Radiation dosing for head computed tomography scan- misses and adverse events. This enabled the VA to fully char-
ners was increased 8-fold over recommended doses; before acterize adverse events and near misses. Most error reduc-
the error was identified, 206 patients received sufficient tion efforts such as the use of time-outs have been imple-
radiation so that many experienced hair loss.6 On the other mented in operating rooms (ORs) because of the significant
side of the United States, 5 wrong-site surgeries occurred potential for mistakes to occur during surgery and the high
at a single Rhode Island hospital. During the 21⁄2-year profile of surgery-related mistakes. The VA found that only
period in which these errors were investigated, the hospi- half of the reported events came from the OR environment.
tal was sanctioned by the state medical board and fines were Wrong-site procedures occurred in non-OR settings such as
levied.7 Despite these actions, the errors continued to radiology but also during dental procedures and thoracente-
occur. sis. Patient misidentification was relatively common in non-OR
Slow progress in adopting practices intended to reduce settings highlighting the need to adopt the rigorous patient
medical errors requires further analysis. Fear of reprisal is identification standards implemented long ago in ORs.
not working. Perhaps physicians have a sense of invincibil- Ophthalmologists and orthopedic surgeons experienced the
ity that erroneous actions will be committed by others and highest rate of preventable adverse events (1.8 and 1.2 events
not themselves. They may also be suspicious of certain pa- per 10 000 operations, respectively) resulting not only from
tient safety advocates (ie, government agencies and insur- wrong-site procedures but seemingly high rates of incorrect
ers whose motives may not seem pure to the practicing phy- device implantation. Root cause analyses demonstrated that
sician). Another possibility is that with lower reimbursement communication problems were the most frequent cause of
rates and increased bureaucracy associated with medical prac- preventable errors.5 The VA implementation of a system-
tice, physicians simply do not believe they have the time to wide mechanism for no-fault reporting has done a great deal
devote to safety training courses and additional practices to show that adoption of risk-free communication among
adopted in the name of safer practices. health care workers can achieve the same results as were
Physician-driven processes for change are more likely to proven effective in the airline industry for enhancing safety
succeed. A prime example has been the Veterans Adminis- awareness. From this VA analysis, the source for prevent-
tration (VA) National Surgical Quality Improvement Pro- able errors was identified leading to a pathway for error re-
gram (NSQIP). The NSQIP was started by a small group of duction. Use of communication tools such as checklists and
surgical leaders within the VA who were anxious to pro- more rigorous attention to patient identification in non-OR
vide better outcomes for their patients. The project was ini- settings can reduce preventable medical errors.
tially resisted by their colleagues who legitimately feared that In an article in the December issue of the Archives of Sur-
aggregated outcomes data might be misinterpreted and used gery, Sax et al10 reported results of implementation of an air-
to penalize clinicians charged with caring for very sick, high- line industry safety practice to medical care. Crew re-
risk patients. Administrators were not enthusiastic about the source management training is now standard within the
program because of its expense (Ralph G. DePalma, MD, airline industry. Crew resource management was devel-
former National Director of Surgery, Veterans Health Ad- oped following investigations in which poor communica-
ministration, written communication, December 2009). With tion was identified as the leading cause for fatal crashes. As
time, the process of assessing and acting on risk-adjusted the report by Neily et al9 demonstrated, inadequate com-
outcomes information resulted in substantial reductions in munication is one of the most important causes of prevent-
mortality in the VA health care system.8 As the program’s able medical errors. Adoption of crew resource manage-
successes became evident, it became accepted by surgeons ment in the medical environment seems logical as a means
and administrators and has been adopted by the American for error reduction. Crew resource management includes
College of Surgeons as its principal means for monitoring review of detailed checklist prior to flying and also incor-
surgical care quality. The NSQIP’s success concurrent to porates processes ensuring free and open communication
stalled efforts to promote patient safety in other clinical ven- between all members of a flight crew, especially facilitating
ues most likely reflects the differences between the top- subordinate employees’ ability to openly discuss concerns
down appeal of a government body (the IOM) and the bot- they have about flight safety with those in the upper hier-
tom-up implementation of the NSQIP. Improvement in the archical ranks. Procedures are used to ensure faultless er-
safety culture in medicine will more likely succeed if the ror reporting ensuring that process improvement takes pre-
impetus for change comes from clinicians and their profes- cedence over assignment of blame.
160 JAMA, January 13, 2010—Vol 303, No. 2 (Reprinted) ©2010 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.

3. FROM THE ARCHIVES
Sax and colleagues10 report their experience with imple- part, by their safety reputation. Although preventable er-
mentation of these same techniques in the OR environ- rors are rare, processes adopted to minimize their risk are
ment. Use of preoperative checklists increased to 100%, er- not and are readily measurable. Clinician participation in
ror reporting doubled and, in general, those working in the team training and the use of checklists and other devices
OR environment felt more empowered to address deficien- proven to lessen the risk for preventable error might pro-
cies they noticed. Processes such as those outlined by Sax vide evidence for health care organizations’ seriousness about
et al will, by necessity, become routine components of daily patient safety. Much as today’s quality indicators are really
practice.6 measures of processes of care rather than outcomes, pa-
More must be done to eliminate preventable medical er- tient safety efforts can be documented by physician partici-
rors. Despite IOM reports and numerous editorials high- pation in these activities. Publication of compliance with
lighting the need to adopt a stronger safety culture in medi- patient safety measures similar to what the Centers for Medi-
cine, little has changed. It is natural to resist change. The care & Medicaid Services now does with quality-indicator
initial reaction to the IOM report 10 years ago was denial. compliance may prove to be the most effective means of pro-
The report was widely perceived as having exaggerated the moting the patient safety movement within medicine.
problem of preventable deaths. Nevertheless, reports of
Financial Disclosures: None reported.
wrong-sided surgeries recently have attracted more atten- Disclaimer: Dr Livingston, a JAMA Contributing Editor, was not involved in the
tion because they are universally viewed as completely pre- editorial review of or decision to publish this article.
ventable and unacceptable; this problem can no longer be
ignored. The report by Neily et al9 shows that completely REFERENCES
preventable errors occur as frequently in the OR as outside
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cesses to eliminate preventable error. 2. Leape LL, Berwick DM. Five years after To Err Is Human: what have we learned?
JAMA. 2005;293(19):2384-2390.
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tient safety. N Engl J Med. 2009;361(14):1401-1406.
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6. Zarembo A. Cedars-Sinai radiation overdoses went unseen at several points.
profile preventable crashes. If passengers lose confidence Los Angeles Times. October 14, 2009.
in the safety of air travel, they will not fly. Public confi- 7. Letter to CEO of Rhode Island Hospital from the Rhode Island Department of
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sician and hospital selection by patients may be made, in sustainable behavioral change? Arch Surg. 2009;144(12):1133-1137.
©2010 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. (Reprinted) JAMA, January 13, 2010—Vol 303, No. 2 161